Put three old guys together, and they'll regal you with memories of the passenger-train era, groaning locomotives pulling into the elegant Pennsylvania Railroad station downtown.

I've yet to meet anybody over age 70 who doesn't get misty when it comes to old trains.

My wife and I heard enough. We committed to a train trip to Washington. No traffic jams, no delayed flights, no holding patterns over Baltimore.

In the 1980s, it only cost $25 over a plane ticket and eight more hours travel time, one way. Small price for nostalgia.

Downtown at 2 a.m. was as fine a spot as any to begin a vacation. If you are reluctant to leave town, this does it, fast.

We stood around waiting in a plastic shack reading the train ads, "You'll discover what magic legends are made of ...''

Well, you get to see everybody's back yard from here to there. In Pennsylvania, you wouldn't believe the size of the underwear on the wash lines. They breed champion football teams.

At Altoona, seven guys got on board wearing seven identical suits. They did a beeline to the club car, and soon we heard loud talk.

I headed back. Seven ex-cons fresh from the Pennsylvania state penitentiary were lecturing on lives of crime amid $3 drinks. Their stories were so realistic, I kept checking my wallet. Gradually, they were passing out from the rediscovered booze. The conductor stacked them on the sofas like cord wood.

We were half asleep out of Harrisburg when a woman slandered our car's mascot. "A rat," she shrieked.

Children cried. Women yelled.

I rolled up a copy of Hairdo magazine, the only reading material provided.

The conductor appeared. "That's only Francois. He lives here. He wouldn't hurt a flea, although he probably has some." Francois, the train mouse.

By this time, the excitement stirred nature's call. I staggered between the flailing bodies back to the men's room.

On the stainless walls of the cubicle, at standing and sitting levels, I found steel-etched signs: "Never flush in station."

OK, the train was parked on a siding, awaiting a freight to pass. I didn't think that counted, so I did what any other conscientious passenger would do. I flushed.

Suddenly, a little trap door opened in the bottom. I was staring at railroad ties, track gravel and Pennsylvania weeds.

To think we kids often walked on railroad tracks in our bare feet.

I picked up my copy of Hairdo, opened the door expecting to meet Francois and hardly heard the conductor snarling about my defilement of the City of Lancaster. Lucky for us, next stop, D.C.